The Priest was now taken out of the coach, from which he might have seen his companion suffer; the bloody axe was hoisted up and he underwent the same operation exactly. Each of these executions lasted about a minute in all, from the moment of the criminal's ascending the scaffold to that of the body's being taken away. It was now seen that the body of the Marquis made such a violent expiration that the belly raised the lid of the basket it was in, and the blood rushed out of the great arteries in torrents. The windows of the _Place de Greve_ were, as usual on such occasions, filled with ladies.[11] Many persons were performing on violins, and trumpets, in order to pass the time away, and to relieve the tediousness of expectation. [Note 11: Mrs. Robinson tells me, that when she was at Paris, a few years ago, her _valet de place_, came early one morning, informing her there would be a _grand spectacle_, and wanted to know if he should hire a place for her. This superb spectacle was no other than the execution of two murderers, who were to be broken alive on the wheel, in the Place de Greve, on that day. She however says, that she declined going.] I have on several other days seen felons sitting on stools on this scaffold, with their hands tied, and their arms and bodies fastened to a stake by a girth, bareheaded, with an inscription over their heads, specifying their crimes and punishment; they are generally thus exposed during five or fix hours, and then sent to prison, or to the gallies according to the sentence. VERSAILLES. BOTANY. SOUNDING MERIDIANS. I went once to Versailles; there is hardly any thing in the palace but the bare walls, a very few of the looking-glasses, tapestry, and large pictures remaining, as it has now been near two years uninhabited. I crossed the great canal on foot; there was not a drop of water in it. In the _Menagerie_ I saw the Rhinoceros, which has been 23 years there; there is likewise a lion, with a little dog in the same den, as his companion, and a zebra. The collection of orange trees cannot be matched in any country where these trees do not grow naturally; the number is about six hundred, the largest trunk is about fifteen inches in diameter, and the age of the most ancient of these trees exceeds three centuries. The _Jardin Potager_, or kitchen garden, is of fifty acres, divided into about five or six and twenty small gardens, of one, two, or three acres, walled round, both for shelter to the plants, and for training fruit trees against. One of these gardens, of two acres, was entirely allotted to the culture of melons, and these were all of the warty _rock cantalupe_ kind, and were growing under hand-glasses, in the manner of our late cucumbers for pickling. The season had been so unfavourable for wall-fruit, that (as the gardener told me) all these gardens had yielded less than a dozen peaches and nectarines. The fruit was sent regularly to the Royal Family in Paris.